Title: Dynamic Nanophotonics
Abstract
On the quest for novel materials that could enable widespread application of plasmonic technologies, great interest has been recently given to the class of transparent conducting oxides (TCOs). In fact, these materials carry the potential to overcome many limitations intrinsically related to the use of noble metals in nanophotonics. In 2015 Dr. Ferrera was part of the research team that demonstrated a new kind of aluminum doped zinc oxide (namely “oxygen deprived” AZO) showing epsilon-near-zero and ultra-fast behavior at typical telecom wavelengths.
During his talk, Dr. Ferrera will present his most recent achievements focused on the dynamic properties of AZO thin films under ultra-fast optical excitation showing unprecedented capabilities in terms of induced transparency, spectral shaping, and summable two-color nonlinearities. These results can be the key for the realization of many new active/tunable devices and systems whose applications include the investigation of celestial objects via table top experiments, the fabrication of ultra-fast and tunable flat meta-elements, the generation of entangled-photon pairs, the generation and detection of THz radiation, just to name a few.
Biography
Dr. Marcello Ferrera attained his master degree in micro-electronic engineering in 2005 from The University of Palermo (Italy). In 2006, he started his doctoral studies in the UOP group at INRS-EMT (Canada), led by Prof. Roberto Morandotti. In 2007, he won the FQRNT doctoral fellowship, which supported his research on low-power nonlinear processes in doped silica structures. In 2010, sponsored by the NSERC post-doctoral fellowship, he joined the group of Prof. Thomas F. Krauss (St. Andrews - UK) where he was dedicated to the numerical modelling and fabrication of silicon-nitride-based photonic modules. In 2012 he won the Marie-Curie IOF fellowship with the project “ATOMIC” developed and carried on inside the group of Prof. Vladimir Shalaev at Purdue University (USA). In 2014, Dr. Ferrera was appointed Assistant Professor at the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences (IPaQS) at Heriot-Watt University in UK, where he currently leads the ASN group.